*Brrrrrrrrr*

The wind snaps and strikes through the fabric of my coat.  My cheeks sting and flush and I look down as I walk to my car.  The air is frigid and foreign.  The sharp clean smell of ice filling my throat and registering cold in my lungs.  My body is weak, tired, overdone.  I walk away from another day with no bounce in my step and no light in my eyes.  To be certain, I didn’t arrive in much better shape. 

Last weeks battle against germs unknown (but partially suspected) has not yet cleared my body of all traces.  Granted, I am a thousand times more fit than I was this night a week ago.  Oddly enough, the weather is much the same.  Frigidly cold.  Hard freeze warning, and threatening of ice.  I had awoken with a slight fever, but went  to work anyway.  An hour into the day I knew the germs had won and I could not last the day.  I held on until 10 am and then surrendered to the inevitable checking in at the nurse on my way out.  101.5  Foreign numbers to one who usually hovers in the vicinity of 97, occasionally peaking to 97.4.  By the evening I had hit and surpassed 102, and was but a hair from 103.  I was miserable.  

Friday morning I awoke to a lower temperature, but the realization that my germs had a nasty side.  I barely made it to the bathroom in time to throw up.  I stumbled back to bed an fell asleep.  I awoke a couple of hours later with the quick adrenaline start trained into me over the years, my hands instinctively going to my nose and pulling away to check.  Clear I can go back to sleep.  Red I have approximately 5 seconds before I have to do lots of laundry.  It was red.  I spent the next half hour hanging over the toilet trying to ignore constant ping ping pinging of the blood as it hit water.  When it was finally over I sat there for ten minutes more willing my head to stop spinning.  

I spent the rest of that day much as I had spent the prior.  Unconscious.  Approximately every 8 hour I would call my mother and talk to her so I could get up and eat something.  Otherwise, I couldn’t stay awake long enough.  Between the coughing, the congestion, the vomiting and then the nausea and subsequent toilet worshiping, and of course the complete lack of appetite I lost somewhere around 10 pounds between Thursday and Sunday.  

Monday I tried to go to school, and gave up.  Tuesday I went and stuck it out, though I quickly realized I should have stayed home.  Wednesday was better, today was better.  Maybe by Monday I’ll be back to normal.  

Oh. Today, from my class alone, I had 10 kids home sick. They all have either the flu or a stomach virus.  My guess is I got both at the same time.  Yesterday I had 6 out and sent two more home.  There were over 20 kids home sick across Kindergarten.  

Bad things happen when it gets cold in Texas.  We aren’t built for it.  Our houses aren’t built for it.  Our cars aren’t built for it (especially the tires).  The wind and the cold bites into us and we wilt and surrender to it.  We can handle the heat, but we sure as hell can’t take the cold.   It was 25 this morning.  Thank goodness its in the 60’s and 70’s come Saturday.